via One Good Move.

Dear Old People Who Run the World,

My generation would like to break up with you.

. . .

You wanted big, fat, lazy “business.”

We want small, responsive, micro-scale commerce.

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You turned politics into a dirty word.

We want authentic, deep democracy — everywhere.

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You wanted financial fundamentalism.

We want an economics that makes sense for people — not just banks.

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You wanted shareholder value — built by tough-guy CEOs. We want real value, built by people with character, dignity, and courage.

From Umair Haque on Harvard Business. Seen it on Joyengine.

So last year saw the release of FLOW about water rights and the developing world, and this year we’ll see the release of Tapped, which it seems will deal more with bottled water and it’s industry and issues.

Also Good this issue is all about water. Some great resources and tips here.

The South Central Farm was one of the biggest and most important community farms in the United States which sadly (like so many things) was quashed to be replaced by warehouses because the warehouses would make more money for the city than the garden.

All the garden did was help the community by providing purpose, food and healthy interaction. A real community. A really sad story.

We ought to have gardens and public spaces for gardening and farming in every city.

Find a screening here.

(and John Podesta, but watching his part is not so necessary, nowhere near as focused, and i dare say, less interesting.)

A Green World is a Safer One from National Building Museum on Vimeo.

Now, this is a recording of a museum lecture, which means (for those of you who have never been to one) there’s about 10 minutes of introduction and thank you’s to supporting organizations, et cetera, ad nauseum. Just skip ahead. Also, it is a longish talk (Ed’s part is about 35 minutes long).

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Maybe i have a skewed sense of how elections can go, and what politics and economics can mean, but maybe that’s because the first debates i ever watched were the 1992 debates featuring Bush, Clinton, and Perot. Perhaps also it’s because i used to spend a lot of time reading Karl Marx and Adam Smith. Maybe I’m not so worried about the “mud slinging” because i know it’s been a major feature of elections in the U.S. of A since the beginning, and mired the election of Thomas Jefferson just as it will mire our current election. Maybe it’s because my politics lie so far of center that my overwhelming sense of the recent debates are not how different the opponents are, but how similar they are.

I’m not exactly saying I’m a supporter of Ross Perot, or Ralph Nader, but neither do i support Barack Obama, or John McCain, or even Bill Clinton, Al Gore, the Bushes, or . . . anybody, at least not full-heartedly. There are good and bad aspects to all of them, though my problems are probably less with them as people than the system that has forced them to play certain games to be able to do any good. In any case, I suppose i’m just musing on how odd it is to find that even when paying a lot of attention, and being involved in the debates, and active in the spectator’s political game, it can yield a shade of the same apathy and cynicism as not having paid attention at all.

Right now, the Earth and almost every plant, animal, and fungus living on it (aside from humans) have no rights. Even among humans universal rights are a new idea, an idea which is still not put to practice for the numeric majority of the world’s population. I believe that the lack of what i’ll call terrestrial rights (those things on earth that are not us), are just as important, though probably more important than our own rights.

William Mcdonough would like us to do something which might sound a little (or a lot) “hippy-dippy” to many of you, but not to me: “love all the children, of all species, for all time.” This is a quote i relate to a relatively recent quote by the Dalai Llama: “[We do] not need more Buddhists, the world should not practice Buddhism, it should practice compassion.”

I’ll get back to this in force later on, but for now: Jane Goodall:

and her organization: Roots and Shoots

MorePartyAnimals is a loose organization promoting the idea that “more choice leads to better results,” and working to inspire people into questioning the status quo, taking part in positive action, and do-it-yourself politics. They come off as a little naïve, but definitely propose a charming alternative to what many consider the abrasive actions of Ralph Nader, surprisingly: toward the same goals.

It is in this time of the presidential cycle when i am forced to remember the debate debacle of the year 2000 and the problems Nader endured, which are characteristic of the fine system our united states employs as a part of being one of the most free places on earth, though, unfortunately still far from fully functional. I remember problems that are characteristic of this duopoly, the corporatocracy that we generously call a democracy:

Leading up to the debates for president in the election of 2000, Ralph was told by the Commission on Presidential Debates (the CPD, a private organization) effectively that because he was independent, that the voting public shouldn’t be allowed to hear what he had to say; that the most influential commercial available to a candidate struggling to get the hundreds of millions of dollars now necessary to compete in our democratic process was not an available option. Specifically, he was told by the CPD that he could not participate in the debate because he was not a consequential candidate (which they explained by saying that his voting contingent was not large enough to warrant his inclusion, he wouldn’t make a difference in the election (how curiously the popular opinion changed just 2 months later)).

Days before the debate would occur (October 3, 2000), a college student chose to give his debate viewing ticket to Ralph so that he could at least be present. With his valid ticket, he attempted to enter an auxiliary viewing room, planning to later give and interview he had been granted with Fox News, “but he was met at the university campus by the CPD’s security consultant and state police and forced to leave the event under threat of arrest. The CPD had instructed the consultant that Mr. Nader could not attend the debate, but Nader was attempting to attend a separate viewing event that was sponsored by the University of Massachusetts, not the CPD presidential debate. Others allowed on campus without any ticket were invited to attend the university event.” ¹

For some further history:

The Commission on Presidential Debates was formed in 1987 to replace the non-partisan League of Women Voters, which included independent candidate John Anderson in the first 1980 presidential debate and prohibited the major party candidates from selecting the debate panelists in 1984. Frank Fahrenkopf, then chairman of the Republican National Committee and now the leading lobbyist for the gambling industry, and Paul Kirk, then chairman of the Democratic National Committee and now a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry, created The Commission on Presidential Debates.

Financed by Anheuser-Busch, Philip Morris and other multinational corporations, the Commission on Presidential Debates has excluded popular third-party candidates, most of whom are critical of the Big Business agenda. Although he received $29 million in public funds, captured 19 percent of the popular vote in the previous 1992 election, and 76 percent of eligible voters wanted him included, Ross Perot was excluded by the two parties from the 1996 presidential debates. Both Pat Buchanan, who collected over $12 million in federal matching funds, and Ralph Nader, who attracted the largest paid audiences during his campaign appearances, were excluded from the 2000 presidential debates, although in a national poll, 64 percent of eligible voters wanted them included.

Feel free to regurgitate whatever media skewed references to Nader and his impact on the 2000 elections you might like, his treatment is nonetheless antithetical to the freedoms we supposedly hold so dear, and for which we are supposedly hated by select leaders in other parts of the world who manipulate elections in only slightly different ways.^{3, 4} It is unfortunate at best that we have had similar events involving the fine people at Democracy Now! at this year’s conventions.

Democracy Now!, Ralph Nader and the people at morepartyanimals.com believe that greater voter awareness and involvement in government is necessary (curiously, so did our “founding fathers”):

Working to get people to the vote, the AIGA³ recently had a contest for posters promoting the vote and it’s importance, the best results of which can be seen here.

See also Video the Vote, “a national initiative to protect voting rights by monitoring the electoral process,” Rock the Vote, and the Daily Show’s Indecision campaigns.

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¹ source: a green party press release regarding the legal suit taken by Ralph against the CPD shortly after October 3rd.

²

“Americans are asking, ‘Why do they hate us?’ They hate what we see right here in this chamber: a democratically-elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms—our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”

~President George W. Bush, during an address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American people, United States Capitol, Washington, DC, September 20, 2001.

³ whose acronym used to be actively espoused as the American Institute of Graphic Artists, but in recent years has been dropped in favor of a catchphrase “a professional association for design,” to more broadly describe the now very broad scope of the group with “22,000 designers through national activities and local programs developed by 62 chapters and 240 student groups.”

⁴ for another more drastic account of the U.S. of A’s involvement in the democratic process, this time of another nation, read here for the history, and here for some updates.